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How We Can Break the Soundless Barrier and Bring Down the Irony Curtain
by Steve Bhaerman (July 3, 2008)
"We no longer have a free press. We have a brainwashing machine stuck on spin."
In case you missed it, there was a front page story two weeks ago that most newspapers - like our own "liberal" San Francisco Chronicle - treated as a no-page story. While those of us in the Bay Area were offered a front page analysis of Tiger Woods' injury and the latest doings of penguins at the zoo, a former commanding general in Iraq accused the Bush Administration of war crimes.
You didn't hear about it? Well, obviously you weren't supposed to. In the preface to a report prepared by Physicians for Human Rights, Maj. General Antonio Taguba (USA-Ret.), who led the U.S. Army's investigation into the Abu Ghraib detainee abuse scandal, wrote: "After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."So, let's see. An American general accuses the Commander-in-Chief of committing war crimes, and it doesn't even make the news. The last time an American general accused the President of committing war crimes was ... uh ... never. In other words, something truly new happens, and it's not even "news." Our so-called "free press" is free to report freely on any story it likes, provided it doesn't rock the ship of state. I've said it before, but it - sadly - bears repeating. The main difference between the corporate media and Pravda is that the Soviet citizens knew they were being lied to.
We no longer have a free press. We have a brainwashing machine stuck on spin.
So if we're wondering why impeachment and war crimes have gotten no traction, well ... welcome to Not-See America, where the press makes it easier and easier for Americans to "not see" what should be all too obvious. Fortunately, as the "up-wising" continues, Americans across the political spectrum are waking up and wising up. Unfortunately, they are finding their voices intentionally silenced by a media monopoly that does more than "cover" the most important stories of our day - it smothers them to death. I guess that's what they mean by "blanket coverage."
However, there is one way to break the story of the most dangerous and toxic regime in American history through the "soundless barrier." It can be done without demonstrations (one of the lessons the powers in power learned in the Vietnam War is to pay no attention to them), petitions, civil disobedience, fasting, etc. It is using the two weapons we the people still have in our arsenal - the marketplace and the meeting place.
Vincent Bugliosi, the former Los Angeles County prosecutor who helped convict the Manson family and wrote a book about it, Helter Skelter (touted as the # 1 True Crime Bestseller of all time) has written a new book called The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder. In it, he lays out what the book jacket describes as "a nonpartisan argument, free from party lines, based upon hard facts and pure objectivity." In other words, the very book America needs right now. Needless to say, finding a review of this book ... well, it's like finding those weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
[Illustration: Abu Ghraib 37 (2005), by Fernando Botero]